


Dimming

by Limen



Category: Original Work
Genre: End of the World, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 05:19:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16340531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Limen/pseuds/Limen
Summary: The world is slowly edging to collapse. What left is there to do?





	Dimming

He stared, blankly, at the shroud where the sky used to be. Most everyone had been doing the same thing, really, as people slowly realized that the light was dimming; that the sun had been, over days, dwindling into a faint, fading point of orange-red light, small enough that he could block it out completely with his thumb if he wanted to, small enough that there should be been a blind, desperate panic by both people who knew too much about what was going to happen and those who knew too little. But that hadn’t happened. Instead, most everyone just went outside to stare. Those who had figured it out early on had been making local news, as they pulled out ladders, put blankets on the roof, and kept their necks craned back until their eyes had become bloodshot, become milky orbs not seeing, but rather just pointed in the direction of the light and heat like sunflowers, slowly turning from left to right, ignoring pleas from loved ones and medical professionals, flailing and spasming violently when removed, lashing at faces with nails now torn and bleeding, kicking at anything nearby. After the first day, meteorologists, weather scientists, and NASA were interrogated, pilloried, pleaded with by every major government and media outlet. Every crackpot theory got their fifteen minutes. Earth was being dragged out of orbit by aliens! The solar panels drained the last light out of the sun! A viral bioweapon is making everyone go blind! None of them professed to explain anything, none of them provided any relief from the slow, burgeoning dread that we finally had a point in time that (if) someone could someday (possibly) look at and conclusively say things had changed forever that day.

That moment was fast approaching now, the sky looked as if someone had made a pinprick hole in a sheet of construction paper, like one of those elementary school displays that reduced to the world to (accurately) something that was small, cheaply made, and suspended in a space which was very quickly about to forget and discard it. People had taken matches, pulled out lighters, put strips of newspaper ablaze, poured gasoline onto the pavement and let the flames trickle into the sewers, as if trying to incite the sun into one last day of luminescence, as if trying to inspire it with a remembrance of flame, spur it into the frenzy of work only jealousy can create. Some went as far as to jump in the flames themselves, fat melting and spurting out in miniature gouts of flame, funeral pyres to the world that had been known.

And then the sun went out. He continued to stare.


End file.
